Pour some corn sugar on me

High fructose wants a makeover -- but is it too late to win back our love?

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What do you do when you’re famous and you’ve got a public image problem? You could go on the cover of Vanity Fair and declare that you are “literally falling apart.” You could do the VMAs and sing about your own douchiness. You could just lay really low and hope everything blows over or, if you’re corn syrup, you might try to reinvent yourself and change your name.

On Tuesday, the Corn Refiners Association, acknowledging that the phrase “high fructose corn syrup” has of late become a shorthand for “deadly crap,” took a break from sticking pins into its Michael Pollan-shaped voodoo dolls and applied to the federal government to change its name on food labels to something a little friendlier. Corn syrup would like you to now address it as “corn sugar.” Miss Corn Sugar if you’re nasty.

Who’d have thought the day would come when anything not a stripper or a Pomeranian would actually want to be called sugar? But with high fructose’s increasing synonymy with childhood obesity, Type II diabetes and evil, food and beverage manufacturers have been flocking back to basics. “Real” sugar has been enjoying a bit of a revival, returning to Sara Lee, Hunts Ketchup and other brands. Kosher Coke – it’s not just for Passover any more.

But while it could take the FDA two years to rule on whether corn syrup can self-identify as corn sugar, Corn Mellencamp or just a mysterious, sexy glyph, the image overhaul has already begun in earnest. You may already have seen the two new ads, both of which feature smiling children, fields or corn as high as an elephant’s eye and nary a whiff of aggressive agribusiness.

The experts at CornSugar.com would furthermore have you know that, in the words of the Jesus and Mary Chain, they are just like honey. “A sugar is a sugar whether it comes from corn sugar or cane sugar. All are safe and natural. Your body can’t tell the difference,” they explain on their abundantly verdant Web page. Oh yes, by all means, leave the decision-making to our indiscriminating bodies!

Whether a sugar really is just a sugar is the subject of intense debate. Perhaps the more important issue is how manufacturers have gotten away for decades with ramping up the sweetness of the foods we consume for their own profit. As the corn sugar folks themselves somewhat darkly warn, “High fructose corn syrup keeps our foods affordable.” You don’t want to pay more for your McFlurry, do you?

But will a little image makeover and calling itself something cute like “golden maize dew” fool label-reading consumers into believing they’re getting something new from the same old, same old? Hey, I still know people who insist that pork is white meat because the National Pork Board said it was. (You do know it comes from the same animal that gives us bacon, right?)

It’s very easy to wrap up a product in a lean, green image and make it seem appealing. But even if you want to go ahead and embrace the Corn Refiners Association’s insistence that “sugar is sugar,” do you really need that much of it in your salad dressing or English muffins? And while that which we call a rose, or a can of Dr. Pepper, by any other name would be as sweet, it would appear that sweetness itself is no longer such a hot commodity.

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Adam, "Pilot"

One of our first exposures to uncomfortable “Girls” sex comes early, in the pilot episode, when Hannah and Adam “get feisty” (a phrase Hannah hates) on the couch. The pair is about to go at it doggy-style when Adam nearly inserts his penis in “the wrong hole,” and after Hannah corrects him, she awkwardly explains her lack of desire to have anal sex in too many words. “Hey, let’s play the quiet game,” Adam says, thrusting. And so the romance begins.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Marnie and Elijah, "It's About Time"

In an act of “betrayal” that messes up each of their relationships with Hannah, Marnie and Elijah open Season 2 with some more couch sex, which is almost unbearable to watch. Elijah, who is trying to explore the “hetero side” of his bisexuality, can’t maintain his erection, and the entire affair ends in very uncomfortable silence.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Marnie and Charlie, "Vagina Panic"

Poor Charlie. While he and Marnie have their fair share of uncomfortable sex over the course of their relationship, one of the saddest moments (aside from Marnie breaking up with him during intercourse) is when Marnie encourages him to penetrate her from behind so she doesn’t have to look at him. “This feels so good,” Charlie says. “We have to go slow.” Poor sucker.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Shoshanna and camp friend Matt, "Hannah's Diary"

We’d be remiss not to mention Shoshanna’s effort to lose her virginity to an old camp friend, who tells her how “weird” it is that he “loves to eat pussy” moments before she admits she’s never “done it” before. At least it paves the way for the uncomfortable sex we later get to watch her have with Ray?

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Adam, "Hard Being Easy"

On the heels of trying (unsuccessfully) to determine the status of her early relationship with Adam, Hannah walks by her future boyfriend’s bedroom to find him masturbating alone, in one of the strangest scenes of the first season. As Adam jerks off and refuses to let Hannah participate beyond telling him how much she likes watching, we see some serious (and odd) character development ... which ends with Hannah taking a hundred-dollar bill from Adam’s wallet, for cab fare and pizza (as well as her services).

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Marnie and Booth Jonathan, "Bad Friend"

Oh, Booth Jonathan -- the little man who “knows how to do things.” After he turns Marnie on enough to make her masturbate in the bathroom at the gallery where she works, Booth finally seals the deal in a mortifying and nearly painful to watch sex scene that tells us pretty much everything we need to know about how much Marnie is willing to fake it.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Tad and Loreen, "The Return"

The only sex scene in the series not to feature one of the main characters, Hannah’s parents’ showertime anniversary celebration is easily one of the most cringe-worthy moments of the show’s first season. Even Hannah’s mother, Loreen, observes how embarrassing the situation is, which ends with her husband, Tad, slipping out of the shower and falling naked and unconscious on the bathroom floor.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and the pharmacist, "The Return"

Tad and Loreen aren’t the only ones to get some during Hannah’s first season trip home to Michigan. The show’s protagonist finds herself in bed with a former high school classmate, who doesn’t exactly enjoy it when Hannah puts one of her fingers near his anus. “I’m tight like a baby, right?” Hannah asks at one point. Time to press pause.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Adam, "Role-Play"

While it’s not quite a full-on, all-out sex scene, Hannah and Adam’s attempt at role play in Season 3 is certainly an intimate encounter to behold (or not). Hannah dons a blond wig and gets a little too into her role, giving a melodramatic performance that ends with a passerby punching Adam in the face. So there’s that.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Shoshanna and Ray, "Together"

As Shoshanna and Ray near the end of their relationship, we can see their sexual chemistry getting worse and worse. It’s no more evident than when Ray is penetrating a clothed and visibly horrified Shoshanna from behind, who ends the encounter by asking if her partner will just “get out of me.”

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Frank, "Video Games"

Hannah, Jessa’s 19-year-old stepbrother, a graveyard and too much chatting. Need we say more about how uncomfortable this sex is to watch?

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Marnie and Desi, "Iowa"

Who gets her butt motorboated? Is this a real thing? Aside from the questionable logistics and reality of Marnie and Desi’s analingus scene, there’s also the awkward moment when Marnie confuses her partner’s declaration of love for licking her butthole with love for her. Oh, Marnie.

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13 of "Girls'" most cringeworthy sex scenes

Hannah and Adam, "Vagina Panic"

There is too much in this scene to dissect: fantasies of an 11-year-old girl with a Cabbage Patch lunchbox, excessive references to that little girl as a “slut” and Adam ripping off a condom to ejaculate on Hannah’s chest. No wonder it ends with Hannah saying she almost came.